Dell's Support Is Great

First off, I bought the XPS 720 from Dell (specs in my sig) around a month ago. It's been working great until I felt like trying the push the video card to its' limit (by overclocking it) and it eventually either screwed up the card or the motherboard. I had to be on Dell's Premium XPS Chat for a few hours before they actually wanted to schedule a Dell onsite appointment, so I complained about how long it took and they gave me a $100 Dell store credit. Sweet. Next, when the guy came to fix my computer (how many companies actually send people over to your house to fix your computer?) he brought over extra restore disks and $300 worth of extra, sealed software (Adobe Soundbooth CS3, worth $200, and Adobe Photoshop Elements 6, worth $100). I'm definitely selling that stuff on eBay . But, anyway, Dell has great support and I'd really recommend it. I'm sure the support is the exact same for notebooks since they have the same people managing both notebooks and desktops.

 

Well you can't sell that stuff on ebay, you will get in big trouble. Those companies watch specifically for those who sell software illegally. (The disks are to be sold with new pc's only and can not be sold separately.)

That is cool that they gave you the extra money for the dell store though.

 

Those disks were never used and the software wasn't installed on my computer when I bought it (I got the software free when the tech guy came). It's not too big a deal if I ship it off like that, I doubt whoever buys it will care as long as it works and it's a legit copy (which it is), and they're both sealed.

 

Does anyone else have any good stories with Dell's support? Why did I bump this up? I wanted to see if anyone else had a bad experience that Dell made up for.

 

So you broke your own computer and then claimed off the warranty to Dell? What exactly did you tell Dell happened to it?

 

I'm pretty sure him OC'ing part was omitted.

 

One of the reps I talked to in the Dell chat said it was okay to overclock it and it is covered by warranty. I think on the XPS lineup (or the XPS gaming desktops at least) they cover overclocking in their warranty. On the new XPS 630 and 730 Dell included NVIDIA's overclocking software (with a much nicer UI than the regular version), nTune, with the system for overclocking it, so Dell is starting to encourage overclocking. The reason they gave me the free stuff was for their crappy reps that can't understand what I'm saying.

 

Thats pretty surprising. I'd expect you can't overclock it to the point that it damages the hardware or anything. Dell doesn't want people disabling the temperature protection to damage their own hardware to take advantage of warranty.

 

As far as i know overclocking is not allowed. If a person doesnt know how to properly overclock a computer it completely mess up the computer hardware and Dell shouldnt be responsible for that, If I mod my computer and i make a mistake it should be under my responsability not Dell's

 

I agree with that MOST of the time. But you forget that there are plenty of vendors that sell GPU's from the factory CLOCKED, sometimes to pretty extreme levels. With a warantee.

Many computer parts are obsolete in ~18 months anyway, especially the graphics cards, so why not torture them a little? If you own the card any longer than that and actually want to play the next new game you are usually ready for an upgrade anyway. Just my 2 cents.

 

Just FYI for anyone who is looking to buy a notebook and are struggling between close processors like say the T9300 vs the T9500. Sure there is only a 100mhz difference, but the T9500 is more overclockable than the T9300. Not saying that its worth it as most people won't overclock their processors, but its just a neat tidbit.

 

How do you overclock the CPUs? I thought that wasnt possible.

 

I'm happy with Dell's support. I bought a used computer. When I received it, it was broken. I got a brand new replacement.

 

happy with dell is another matter?

 

So far, yes. My 1520 doesn't blow a motherboard every month like my thinkpad did *knock on wood*

 

I love dell computers and their support. I am comparing to HP, Sony and Gateway support.

I have never ever been denied any warranty request from dell. Getting anything under warranty from HP is like asking them to do a favor on your life.

 

I did notice that the people on Dell online chat support actually seem like humans and know some information. My experience with HP online chat is that they have the computer knowledge of a newborn baby. It seems like they have changed alot though and for the better because I got crappy service from them on my Dimension 4600 Desktop and my parents Inspiron 6000 Laptop.

 

Yeah, HP is like that. Dell online chat seems to be more human.